The Ripper Crew

The Ripper Crew

18 deaths

In the early eighties Robin Getch, a former employee of John
Wayne Gacy, and three associates, Edward Spreitzer and brothers
Andrew and Thomas Kokoraleis, had a Satanic cult suspected for the
disappearances of 18 women in the streets of Chicago. Known as the
Ripper Crew, Gecht and his gang drove around in a van looking for
prostitutes to sacrifice in Gecht's apartment. They would remove
one breast from each victim and eat it as Robin read passages of
the bible.

Getch and his friends were arrested in 1982 for the stabbing of
a teenaged prostitute. Like every good Satanist they all started
squealing on each other. Though Robin's associates and other witnesses
implicated him in some of the deaths, investigators never had enough
evidence to charge him with murder. Robin is serving 120 years in
Menard Correctional Center for mutilating and raping an 18-year-old
prostitute. Fellow cultist Edward Spreitzer and Andrew Kokoraleis
were sentenced to death. Kokoraleis' brother Thomas was sentenced
to life for his role in the murders.

On March 16, 1999, Andrew Kokoraleis was executed by lethal injection
at Tamms Correctional Center in Southern Illinois for the 1982 strangulation
murder of Lorraine Borowski, a 21-year-old secretary at a real estate
office that was abducted on her way to work. Her mutilated body
was found in a cemetery. Kokoraleis, 35, sighed three times, licked
his lips and appeared to be speaking quietly to himself before he
died.

Defense attorneys unsuccessfully argued that Andrew was coerced
into confessing. They also argued that new information cast doubt
on the credibility of confessions by two co-defendants who accused
Kokoraleis. Kokoraleis, who had been sentenced to life in prison
for the murder of Rose Beck Davis, was the first prisoner executed
at a new super-maximum-security prison in southern Illinois.

On March 7, 1999, David A. Gecht, the son of Robin, and two others,
were charged with first-degree murder in connection with the shooting
death of a Northwest Side man. The killing is believed be to gang-related,
police said.